Get Off The Pedestal

Shrikumar Sangiah

Azim Premji University (APU) and the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) undertook a study in 2018 to assess people’s trust in India’s institutions. The study found that of the various Indian institutions, the one that is most trusted is the army/military. In the study, the army/ military scored the highest on ‘effective trust’ with a score of 77 per cent.

The APU-CSDS study defined effective trust for any given institution as the difference between the percentage of respondents who, during the study, marked ‘a great deal of trust’ at one end of the scale and ‘no trust at all’ at the other end of the scale.

The Supreme Court came in second with an effective trust score of 54.8 per cent and the high courts were third with a score of 48 per cent. If the study is repeated today, the military, in all likelihood, will again top the rankings.

People’s trust in the military is not unique to India. A 2020 Gallup poll in the USA found that 72 per cent of Americans said they had ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ of confidence in the military.

Some of this trust and admiration for the military arises from the myths nurtured and perpetuated by political parties, favourable depictions of the military in literature, films and songs, and its mythologisation in other sources of popular culture. This adulation for the military, the common manifestation of which is seen in requests by people for selfies with uniformed personnel, preferential boarding at airports for serving and veteran soldiers, exemptions at highway toll booths, etc., paradoxically, becomes a cause that creates a distance between the military and the general citizenry.

Without a doubt, military service is to be admired. However, the notion within the military that those not in service are somehow not adequately fulfilling their civic responsibilities is misplaced. This notion has nevertheless gained strength and found much popular acceptance even among those outside the military. Reverence for the military is viewed by those not in service as a form of social penitence. Expressing gratitude and appreciation for those in the military is in order, but blind admiration is unhealthy and worse, is corrosive to the military’s ethos of selfless service.

Myth Making

To win and keep the people’s trust, the military expends significant effort. The military, through carefully thought-out training programmes, instils in its personnel the values of duty, service, ethical conduct and self-sacrifice. It trains its men and women to imbibe the right values—for the military to always live up to the trust that the people repose in it.

Soldierly abilities, and the mindset required to become effective warriors, are imparted during training by laying a strong foundation of behavioural, technical, and operational skills. An essential component of such training is the study of military history. Studying military history equips soldiers with an understanding of the contexts of past battles and the complex interplay between actions and outc